Missed it by that much!

I love, love mixing color. I can’t wait to figure out a palette for a painting, it's like rushing to get to my favorite part of a story. I dove into this painting of a blue iris for my bedroom in that fashion, no drawing on the canvas, no blocking out, just color! Pure fun baby! That is something I love about acrylics, you can paint over them to your heart's content. No worries about getting it right the first time.

Blue Iris, palette test

Unfortunately, towards the end of getting most of the colors and shapes blocked out, I noticed that the iris wasn't fitting on my canvas how I wanted it to. The background, the left back petal and foreground petals seemed too small, the center section seemed off. What the ...? 

Color and shapes blocked onto canvas, 1st time.

I kept looking at my drawing and my canvas wondering what was wrong. Eventually, it dawned on me. In my haste to get painting, I had forgotten all about proportion! The proportional size of the drawing that I created from my reference photo didn’t match the canvas proportion! Sheez, that is usually one of the first things I check when starting a new painting and I missed it. Harrumph!

First drawing,  4.5 x 6 inches,
wrong proportion for a 16 x 20 inch canvas!

I thought it was appropriate that I posted about failure last month, since I literally had to go back to the drawing board to correct my mistake this month. I re-proportioned my drawing and added a basic grid, then re-sketched the iris on the canvas using the same grid. I was absolutely making certain that I would flip failure on it's head!

Second drawing, 4 x 5 inches

Canvas size, 16 x 20 with new grid.

Of course I was a bit annoyed, I had made a goal with this painting to be more efficient with my time. Specifically, focus more on blocking out shapes and colors before details. I have a tendency to get caught up in the little details too soon and boy, I certainly missed seeing the bigger picture this time! :D I am glad I figured it out, since I am much happier with the result. As I finished blocking out the color the second time, everything fit where it should. Hurrah!

Color mostly re-blocked in, grid almost covered.

Thankfully, it's only a painting and one that was possible to fix when the calculations were off. It's not like having your space probe crash into a planet! However, it is a good lesson to remember next time I am tempted to start building without making sure my foundations are in place!

>^-^<

Tina